Wildfire

chapter 1

Ge = older brother, familial or otherwise.
Honorifics will be stylicised in this translation.

Using 6 RMB = 1 USD as the conversion rate throughout this novel.

Lunar New Year i.e. Spring Festival, Chinese New Year.
_________________________________________

Lunar New Year Eve.

It was a night for family reunions, and the light that shone out of every window was mellow and warm.

Tao Xiaodong opened the door upon reaching home, and balmy air immediately billowed at his face. Two children were seated on the couch, eating fruits as they watched the telly. Hearing his return, they both looked towards the door, and one of them greeted him “Ge” with a smile.

Despite calling them children, that was only how they appeared to Tao Xiaodong. In actuality, they were both high school students in their sixteens going on seventeens—adolescents, no longer quite the little ones anymore.

“Is it cold outside?” The one speaking was a fair-skinned boy dressed in woollen pyjamas and with his feet bundled in thick socks. He walked over towards Tao Xiaodong who offered him a hand, which he reached out to take.

He felt from the palm, moving to the back of the hand, before exclaiming, “Whoa, it’s so cold.”

Tao Xiaodong drew his hand away. He rested its back on the other’s arm and changed into indoor slippers, saying, unfazed, “It’s still bearable.”

The boy clasped Tao Xiaodong’s hand, rubbing warmth into it, then turning his head to say to the other boy still on the couch, “Let’s have dumplings.”

The dark-haired boy on the couch responded in assent, standing up and heading to the kitchen.

This was Tao Xiaodong’s home. His family. Altogether, it was just the three of them.

The one seated next to him was his younger brother, Tao Huainan. He was a rather quiet boy; very fair, very skinny, and always with a docile and serene look in his eyes.

—He was a beautiful, blind boy.

Whereas the boy preparing dumplings in the kitchen was one picked up by Tao Huainan at the age of eight.

The boy had wrested away Tao Huainan’s thermos cup of hot milk, his lower body bare in the glacial depths of winter, exposing skin that was walloped black and blue. But he had grabbed it too forcefully, spilling the milk all over Tao Huainan.

That was the winter when Tao Xiaodong and Tao Huainan’s parents passed on. Tao Xiaodong was sending the ashes back to their hometown, an impoverished but picturesque village. Tao Xiaodong had spent his childhood there, but it was Tao Huainan’s first time in the village.

Tao Huainan was startled from having his milk snatched and spilled over him. He couldn’t see the other, but he knew that the hand that knocked against him was icy and rough. Behind, a middle-aged villager was telling the other off, yet his words didn’t sound in the least bit apologetic. Someone had found a pair of trousers for that bare-bottomed boy, in fear that he would lose his family jewels to the cold.

Tao Huainan was listening to the disjointed hubbub of voices around him at that time and could hear the young boy’s teeth clattering from the chill right next to him. He took off his shoes and kicked them towards that side. The other boy was even shorter than him. Tao Huainan’s eyes were unable to focus, simply staring somewhere ahead. He lifted his chin slightly and spoke, voice nasally from a cold. “Wear them.”

Then, Tao Huainan was carried indoors by Tao Xiaodong to put on another pair of shoes.

“What type of dumplings did you cook?” Tao Huainan straightened up at the dining table. Tao Xiaodong was still talking on the phone elsewhere, and Tao Huainan had asked this when Chi Cheng brought the dumplings out.